Wound healing is an active area of interest for many researchers given its importance in the treatment of burns, the prevention of post surgical adhesions and in cosmetic surgery. The objective of using a wound dressing is to accelerate wound healing by preventing excessive fluid loss and bacterial infection, and by promoting the acceleration of tissue regeneration (T. Stephen, in Wound management and dressings, The Pharmaceutical Press, London, (1990), 1.).
Currently, available dressing materials tend to be composed of gauze, which frays easily. The fibers of the gauze tend to become trapped in the nascent tissue of healing wounds, making the eventual removal of the dressing extremely difficult and painful. This would also likely tear off fibroblasts or epithelial cells that might have proliferated and migrated onto the dressing material, thereby compromising the normal healing process by inflicting secondary damage to the wound (Cochrane et al. Biomaterials (1999) 20: 1237.). This is often the case when a dressing has to be changed routinely.